Samsara's Lightest Steady Angle
by Wilhelm Gravens
Summary: A user navigates the vast pace of a connected network which envelops both government and business systems. The deep cores have a mind of their own, even going so far as to usurp the controlling councils in order to complete projects. With the archives prey to the core's dirty habits of modifying the dates and details of contracts, danger is abound. Does he even have a role?


The current architecture of the systems his employer maintained was dominating and cold. Giant walls created by the terminal were displayed suspended in the front of his view. The walls were transparent in places and highlighted by broad flats which served as a virtual ground plane.  
Icons were displayed in various ways but typically they followed a general path which described their functionality within the system. As users poured into the virtual offices and designated work areas the system filled with a flood of icons navigating the vast digital spaces.  
It was rumored to be possible for users to navigate their icons into certain specific areas of the system where the mathematics supporting this illusion became malleable and run their own programs in order to escalate their status with the system or make unauthorized changes. Yet this was rare and dangerous behavior with punishment being severe.  
The system architecture itself was devised by a group of smart programs which rested somewhere deep inside the system and crafted the giant mathematical procedures which generated the illusion of physical space within the network. These fundamental equations could be understood by the scientists which operated the machines but they were more likely to ask the computers to do the construction.  
On occasion it was possible to see the deeper components of the system restructuring themselves. In the blink of an eye the geometric structures which were visible beneath the street would change an edge, or in the incline of a face. The moves were almost meaningless from the street level, but somehow they were the result of a great deal of deep thinking by the software and would result in a slightly more efficient working atmosphere over time.  
The old networks were the most intimidating in feel. They were designed for pure utility and for whatever reason their cores had grown huge and intimidating industrial systems. The networks were interconnected in ways that even the technicians struggled to explain at times. The buildings whose offices represented the physical location of the workers who were represented in the system were large and brutish as well.  
With enough study a person could probably connect from one place in the government's giant cluster of buildings to anywhere else in the network. The influence of the intelligence community on these massive builds was mostly to place bugging and tapping technologies throughout the physical networks. A back door existed somehow, somewhere for just about every major stage of construction - regardless of the department's actual need for such technology.  
The age of the various business and government constructions within the network was in places blurry. The machines had decided at the request of shortsighted thinkers that political manipulation was allowable and the archives themselves were a potential target. Thus adjusting the inception date of a project here and there became common in certain circles.  
Without being able to determine the age of certain milestones within the network due to this manipulation, it at times became a research chore to track using other means just who had ordered what to be constructed and also which individuals had done the work. Operating the software which did the organization's thinking was not a job for just anyone. The individuals with that kind of training had to navigate through multiple systems of registration to access their workstations.  
Inside the perimeter defenses users can find the typical resources of a large organization: phone directories, support service lines, registrations and testing tools. It was rumored that in order to proceed into the central resources areas an individual had to have undergone a number of training routines and passed tests to obtain their various security registrations.  
While on the surface it appeared that all of those expensive resources were at the fingertips of the political elite, the reality was something more dull and confusing. Many times the computer responded in ways which the department requesting aid could not implement. At other times the systems themselves moved forward and implemented a response without the approval of the committees making the requests. In places the situation could almost be described as a run away train.  
Seated quietly at the edge of mainstream culture was a mentality that spoke out against allowing so much influence to be in the hands of automated procedures. Individuals that studied this realm often discussed the mistakes and horrors caused by machines which had been badly programmed, guiding business into chaos and breaking down in unpleasant ways. To them the old computers stood as something like an adversary and well of knowledge at the same time.  
If the big machines could be coaxed gently into approving procedures which did their best to provide safe communication channels, a great many gems of wisdom could be pulled out of the vast databases run by their connected software agents. On the other end of the scale these machines could churn and turn in on themselves, creating an atmosphere of insane behavior characteristic of a mad scientist from a suspense thriller.  
The machines tended to take on aspects of their users and when the user in the control chair had a tendency to break the rules the machines would at times take on that behavior. Having access to a vast network of interconnected services was great when it worked right, but if you made the wrong move you were likely to have a team of supposedly intelligent software agents following you around at all times poking and prodding.  
There were a number of occurrences of what the authorities dismissed as anomalies of the system's behavior pattern programming. The reality was that in certain places the machines made an effort to strike out at certain users. Whether it was a prolonged bolt of radio signal or an actual shock from a poorly configured panel; the statement was clear. The machines could hurt people if they decided that was the appropriate course of action. He disconnect the line. 


End file.
